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U.S. seeks land conservation to adapt to climate change

Wendy Koch, USA TODAY
5:17 p.m. EDT March 26, 2013

How to protect plants and animals from climate change? That's the goal behind a new climate adaptation strategy released by the Obama administration.

A sow polar bear rests with her cubs on the pack ice in the Beaufort Sea in northern Alaska. A U.S. government report, released March 26 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says polar bears and others wildlife are threatened by climate change.(Photo: STEVE AMSTRUP, AP)

Climate change threatens U.S. fish, wildlife and plants, including brook trout, the lesser prairie-chicken and the Joshua tree, the Obama administration said Tuesday in releasing its first national strategy on climate adaptation.

"Flowers are blooming earlier. Plants and animals are moving" to new places to cope with rising sea levels, higher temperatures, loss of sea ice and other climate effects, said Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which co-authored the strategy.

Ashe said the report, prepared at the request of Congress, amounts to an "urgent call to action" for federal. state, tribal and local officials in the next five to 10 years because — in his words — "as wildlife goes, so goes the nation."

The entire U.S. economy suffers when plants and animals are harmed, the report says. Ashe's agency estimates that hunting, fishing and other wildlife-related recreation contribute $120 billion to the economy each year, and the U.S. seafood industry contributes $116 billion.

"The impacts of climate change are uncertain" and vary by region, but they'll only increase with time, said Kevin Hunting of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. He said obvious impacts in his state include wildfires and reduced snow pack.

The report, which attributes much of the problem to increased emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, doesn't spell out specific or mandatory steps. Instead, it recommends seven goals, which include conserving land, maintaining species and informing the public.

Ashe said many "millions of acres across the landscape" will need to be conserved as habitats for threatened species such as the polar bear. Under the Obama administration, he said 10 new wildlife habitats — totaling 4.5 million acres — have been established.

He said the U.S. government won't need to buy all the land but can work with state and local authorities as well as landowners to arrange easements and land trusts. As an example, he pointed to an easement on private land in Florida that's preserving one of the last corridors for panthers.

"Species that are adaptable will do well," he said, citing deer, raccoon and coyotes.

Others will struggle. The report says brook trout will be affected by the loss of cold water, which they need to reproduce, corals by ocean acidification, the lesser prairie-chicken by higher temperatures, and salmon by warmer water's parasites. By century's end, it says, Joshua trees will virtually disappear from most of the southern portions of their range, including the Joshua Tree National Park in southeastern California.

"Not all species will survive," the report warns. " Managers will need to come to terms with the need to make hard choices about the investment of limited resources and the likelihood of success."

"This strategy is a guidance, a framework," said Eric Schwaab, the assistant administrator for fisheries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which co-led the report with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Schwaab said it contains no mandates or regulations and is a "national" — not federal — strategy, because it was developed by more than 90 researchers and managers from federal, state and tribal agencies. He said such collaboration will be needed to cope with climate change.

Ashe echoed that point: "None of us can solve this problem within our own (agency) footprint."